The sun is shining, the birds are singing and the sky (volcanoes notwithstanding) is clear. So what better time to dip yourself into a complete and utter bloodbath of an album? And as luck would have, the delightfully named Fleshrot have released just the album for those long sunny days. Although to be honest, this sort of mayhem is welcome all year round.
What we essentially have here is a brutal death metal album. While it might lack the technicality of Morbid Angel, it nevertheless possesses enough finesse buried in the brutality to keep your ears on edge. Opening strongly with ‘From The Abyss’, there’s no time to catch your breath before you’re hurled bodily into a vat of blood of blood and guts. This is extremely accomplished stuff, but then these London stalwarts have been going for nigh on seven years. Fleshrot certainly do have an edge over bands like Annotations of an Autopsy: while the latter do tend to sound tired after a few repeat hearings, while the former have a greater depth to their music, not totally unlike The Faceless, although without some of the more outrageous showboating.
While they can hurtle through songs at a fair old lick, until ‘Dispossessed’ starts with a moody mid-paced introduction, and then settles into- oh, they’re off into hyperspeed again. And that’s pretty much the case here. In a “blink and you’ll miss it” kind of way, there’s a tight-fisted progressiveness here. As is common to the brutal death metal genre though, it’s buried under the sheer ferocity, although Fleshrot do have the knack of making it horribly compelling stuff. ‘Venatic Perversion’ certainly shifts through the chords like joyrider on cheap speed trying to make a quick getaway.
Overall though, while this isn’t earth-shatteringly innovative, it does have more of a spark to it then the likes of Carnifex, and it certainly has a tad more intellectualism (if you can call it that) than the ever-touring Ingested. This is simply a very well-played metal album, and who could want anything more for their brutal summer listening?
http://www.myspace.com/fleshrot
